Surviving ‘Collateral Murder’: Soldier Relives Infamous WikiLeaks Video

WHISTLEBLOWING - SURVEILLANCE, SHORT VIDEO CLIPS, 8 Apr 2013

Russia Today – TRANSCEND Media Service

It was the video that put WikiLeaks on the map: “Collateral Murder” turned the tide of war in Iraq and landed Private first class Bradley Manning in military detention. But for Army veteran Ethan McCord, it was just another day on duty. When he approached the van targeted by the airstrike, he heard a noise he wasn’t expecting: the cry of a little girl.

“I think she was four years old and you could tell she had a wound to the stomach and I remember her looking at me and the blood around her eyes made her eyes so ghostly,” he says.

McCord grabbed the girl and ran her into a nearby building. There he picked the glass out of her eyes so she could blink and handed her off to a medic.

“I went back outside and we were told to take pictures and so I started taking pictures of the van,” he says. Then he discovered another child.

“That’s me right there,” McCord tells Lopez as he walks her through the now infamous “Collateral Murder” clip. “That is a little boy that I originally thought was dead.”

 “I couldn’t stop myself from crying,” he says.

McCord sought out mental health afterward, and says he was mocked by his commanders and threatened with expulsion from the military.

“I know that I will never, ever, ever get better,” he says. “I will never get over this.”

 “You know America, we were John Wayne, we were wearing the white hat. Americans were always trying to help people, that’s what we do, we try to spread freedom and democracy,” he says. “With the barrel of a gun.”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6Ye12mQvcw

This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 8 Apr 2013.

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